The Great Debate
by Red Aurora
Summary: Charles and Tony grew up together and meet up at a diner every week to discuss their lives. This weeks topic? Which of their evil boyfriends would win in a battle. Witty banter ensues. Post-Avengers and assuming something similar to XMFC happened in the modern day.


_I just finished my semester and I needed up a pick-me-up after evaluations. I wrote this back in June of 2012 then never published it so I edited it and now here it is. It's my first foray into slash (although it's really just references to slash and I guess my Onslaught stuff could be slash if you squint). I hope you enjoy it._

_**Setup**: Basically what you need to know is this is modern day very post-Avengers but ignoring any of the Phase 2 Marvel movies once they start coming out. There are references to First Class and The Avengers and two little itty bitty ones to X3 and Iron Man. Obviously some of the First Class stuff would be different since it couldn't have been during the Cuban Missile Crisis. Charles and Tony are old friends who grew up together. Pepper and Tony are magically not together. Nothing against Pepper. I just like Loki-Tony._

_**Warnings**: There's some language. Nothing too serious though. _

_**Disclaimer**: I don't own X-Men or the Avengers. Lame._

* * *

Charles Xavier and Tony Stark sat at their usual booth at their usual diner. It was neutral ground for the pair, something not available at Charles' Westchester estate or any of Tony's extravagant homes. It had become a tradition to meet there once a week to sympathize, complain, nag, etc. about life and supervillains and how difficult it is to be a genius. Most of the time they poked fun at one another ("Yellow spandex, Charles? Really?" "Red and gold metal, Tony? Give me a moment. I'm trying to think if you could make it gaudier…no, I don't think you could."). As respected leader of the X-Men and genius-playboy-philanthropist-billionaire member of the Avengers respectively, nobody dared lay into them like they could lay into each other. Except for Pepper with Tony. And the Avengers with Tony. Well, pretty much everyone laid into Tony, but everyone except Charles would eventually get on his nerves, so the point is moot. Such were the advantages of having a childhood friend in a similar line of work, aka keeping the world safe from insane megalomaniacs, mutants, robots, or whatever decided to attack that week.

So sarcasm was clearly the answer when Charles' relationship with Erik Lehnsherr, aka Magneto, and Tony's relationship with Loki Laufeyson, aka batshit crazy Norse god, came to light. In fact, most of their lunch after the big reveal went along the lines of "I'd ask if he had you at 'hello', but did he get a chance to say hello before trying to enslave you with his pretty staff then hurling you out the window?" and "You know what they say, opposites attract. Would you describe your attraction to him as magnetic? Does the compass of your heart always point to him? Wait, come back, I have more!".

This time, though, their sarcasm masked a hefty helping of worry. Tony knew Magneto had been involved in the incident that had left Charles hospitalized for the better part of a month (Tony didn't know how involved because it was the one thing the telepath refused to speak about outside of vague generalities). Charles knew Loki had, well, thrown Tony out a window while trying to lead an alien army to take over the world. Ah, love. The mutant and the billionaire seemed to accept each other's significant others after some banter, a few arguments, and a remarkably long silent treatment (at least for Tony…10 days without talking to Charles was a record he hadn't come anywhere near since Afghanistan. He got so moody that Pepper coordinated an intervention that involved impressive teamwork from both the Avengers and the X-Men). Which brought them up to the present.

Charles stirred his tea while Tony took an absurdly large bite of his sandwich. The telepath raised an eyebrow, but made no comment. Saying anything would no doubt serve to push Tony to chew with his mouth open in rebellion. He stared into the cup of swirling tea thoughtfully.

"Imagine if my evil boyfriend teamed up with your evil boyfriend."

Tony pulled the sandwich away from his mouth. "Please. My evil boyfriend would just use your evil boyfriend then turn on him once they won and take everything for himself." He punctuated his argument with another large bite.

"Quite possibly. Erik does get rather caught up in the moment." He paused to move from his tea to spoon at his still cooling soup. "Of course, he's gotten better at keeping the big picture in view. Perhaps he'd turn on your evil boyfriend and take everything for himself first."

"Oh, please!" Half-chewed bits of bread spewed over the table much to Charles' chagrin. "My evil boyfriend would never in a million years get outsmarted by your evil boyfriend."

"He wouldn't necessarily have to outsmart him. Only surprise him. Besides, it's not as if my evil boyfriend is completely unintelligent."

"You can't argue that he's smarter than my evil boyfriend though."

"Mmm, perhaps not," Charles conceded. "Though at least his plans aren't always a circus show. He knows how to be subtle."

"Loki can be subtle! He's the god of lies!"

"He opened an interdimensional portal from the top of your skyscraper and marched – no – _flew_ around Manhattan with an army of aliens and what can best be described as armored whale-dragons."

"Okay, not so subtle on that count, but that's not how he usually plays things…at least not until he gets revealed at which point things can get out of hand, but seriously, you can't argue that your evil boyfriend is the more subtle of the two. Not while he's wearing that magenta and purple ensemble."

"Damn," Charles murmured as he sat back to think up his next argument. "Well he doesn't usually-"

"He was planning to uproot the Golden Gate Bridge. That's the definition of unsubtle."

"Okay, fine."

"Besides, my evil boyfriend would just use his staff and enslave your evil boyfriend."

"He'd have to get the staff back first."

"I'm sure he has other ways of enslaving people's minds. He's known for that kind of thing. Apparently. I mean, that's what Thor says, so-"

"Well, if he's doing it with that ridiculous staff, my evil boyfriend will just use his powers to discard of it then pull that absurd helmet from your evil boyfriend's head and stab him with it. All without getting within 50 feet of him."

"Do you really want to bring ridiculous helmets into this?"

Charles' eyes went cold; Tony recognized he was treading in dangerous waters, the helmet being one of those vague generalities that was oft mentioned and never discussed. "Okay, okay, so your evil boyfriend stabbed my evil boyfriend with his own helmet. My evil boyfriend would pull the helmet out, heal himself, and throw some kind of crazy green lightning spell at your evil boyfriend."

"Which my evil boyfriend would levitate away from."

"You can't just levitate out of the way of a spell!"

"He's very adept at levitating now. He can do it quite fast. If I said 'flying', would it make you happier?"

"Doesn't matter. Spells are faster."

"Then he'd form a shield of metal and deflect it."

"It doesn't work that way!"

"Actually, it does. I do occasionally watch your battles on the news. I've seen his spells ricochet."

"Damn, I was hoping you hadn't noticed that."

"Really? You were hoping I hadn't noticed something that could potentially save my team's life if they ever come up against your evil boyfriend?"

"N,o I was hoping you wouldn't use it in our hypothetical evil boyfriend battle."

"It wouldn't be much of a fair hypothetical fight if we didn't pull out all the stops."

"Fine!" he said a little louder than he intended, drawing a few glares from the diner patrons before settling down.

"Inside voice, Anthony," Charles smirked.

"Fine," Tony said, calmly this time. "My evil boyfriend creates multiple copies of himself and confuses your evil boyfriend, then strikes while he's trying to figure out which one is real."

"My evil boyfriend strikes back with a hailstorm of metal."

"Which my evil boyfriend deflects with a magical shield, then pretends to petition for peace. When he gets close enough, he stabs your evil boyfriend with his concealed knife."

"Oh please, my evil boyfriend would _never_ fall for that. 'Peace is never an option,'" the telepath mimicked in a gruff imitation of Magneto. "Besides, my evil boyfriend would sense the knife. Unless…what's the knife made of? Is it magnetic?"

"I don't know," Tony replied, a little disheartened at his hypothetical strike being countered. "Thor wasn't very specific about the make of it, just that he'd been stabbed in the side."

"So we appear to have ended in a draw with the loser being anyone in the general vicinity of the battle."

"Giving up?" Tony perked up.

"Never!" Charles exclaimed, affronted at the suggestion. "I think we've firmly established that my evil boyfriend can counter anything your evil boyfriend could throw at him."

"That is _so_ not true! My evil boyfriend could kick your evil boyfriend's ass!"

"Oh, please," Charles said as he rolled his eyes.

"Magic."

"Magnetism."

"God!"

"Mutant!"

"What?! You're actually arguing that mutant beats god?"

Charles shrugged. "Who's to say the Asgardian gods aren't just another form of mutant? Their powers aren't all that terribly different from some of the mutations we've seen here." The telepath's face lit up. "In fact, do you think Loki would let me run some tests-"

"You are not running tests on my evil boyfriend to see if he's a mutant!"

"You're no fun," pouted Charles. "I'll ask Thor later."

Tony huffed. "Fine. That still doesn't answer the question of who would win the evil boyfriend battle."

"Well, if my evil boyfriend starts losing, I suppose I'd have to step in."

"Now that I want to see! You and Loki in a battle of minds."

"So in the battle of evil boyfriends, I come out on top?"

"Mmm, I didn't say you'd win. You'd give him a run for his money, sure, but-"

"But we can all agree that you'd come in a solid fourth," said the telepath, taking an innocent sip of soup.

"Wait, what now?! How's that? I could blast you AND Loki into oblivion!"

"Yes, and Erik can control metal. Remind me, what is your suit is made of again, _Iron Man_?

"Fine," Tony grumbled, snapping at a stray piece of turkey that was trying to escape his nearly forgotten sandwich, "so your evil boyfriend beats me and my evil boyfriend beats you."

"We never actually established that he'd beat me-"

"My evil boyfriend beats you." Tony repeated over Charles' protests until the telepath was forced to give up and sit back with his arms crossed petulantly. "Where does that leave us?"

"Hoping that our evil boyfriends never meet in battle."

"True that."

* * *

_I just…I don't know what happened. I was writing other stuff at the time (probably Onslaught related) and then this came out. There were a few other snippets of ideas that came with it (including *gulp* a mpreg idea…never did I ever think I'd have a mpreg idea, but it happened). I don't know if I'll develop any of them, but if there's interest I could try after I finish _The Road Not Taken_. Anyway, that's all for now. I hope you enjoyed it. Review if you have the chance :)_


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